


0 Kills, 3 K.O.

by toomanyhometowns



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Guilt, Project Freelancer, allusions to pre-project life, potentially disturbing, war means killing aliens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26445628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns/pseuds/toomanyhometowns
Summary: Carolina hadn’t always shot to injure.
Collections: tumblrfic exodus





	0 Kills, 3 K.O.

**Author's Note:**

> It is the time of Quar where I upload fic I wrote years ago!
> 
> CW for someone being manipulated into murder, sort of.

Carolina hadn’t always shot to injure–her first six months on active service, a killshot was a blessed luxury. They were fighting nightmare creatures, and needed to make themselves the stuff of nightmares, too.

And then she was in the first group tapped for Freelancer, plucked from one warzone and put back into another, familiar, familial. (Nobody whispered nepotism because nobody could imagine the Director had a last name, had a daughter. When she told her team her name was Carolina it meant she got a reputation for being tough, in-character, black ops, rather than the A-to-A cipher to keep the cryptographers off their marks.)

She trained with her new team, took small private bets with herself on who was likely to make it (Maine, Iowa) and who was not (Rhode Island, who kept insisting on being called RI). She made sure she spent as much time with the latter as with the former, made sure she cared about them equally. 

Carolina got used to having a mess hall and a rack and a CO who had never killed anyone, and then she was sent on the first simulation run.

"We’ve got a new fusion coil," one of the engineers said. "But it’s bulky."

"Hard to rig up," another chimed in.

"We need to test its effectiveness in a combat situation."

Carolina had never specialized in munitions, but this was her new posting, so she said she’d see what she could do. Sims were fun, in a way–the adrenaline of a fire-fight, but brightly coloured and non-lethal.

They explained how the mission would go: she’d be dropped at a red base, lead the soldiers there on an infiltration mission to get a flag from the blue base, and while there, they’d drop the fusion coil and set it to detonate on a timer.

Easy, she figured, and it was.

"Who the fuck are you?" said the smallest red soldier, and that was her first clue.

"A Freelancer," she told her. "They sent me to help you out. You can call me Agent Carolina."

"Right-o, Agent," the soldier said, and Carolina had to ask outright for her name and rank. She’d eventually forget it. It would be better that way.

The reds were the worst soldiers she’d ever served with (and that was her second clue), but the blues must’ve been worse, because her team made it into the base, got the flag, set up the fusion coil to blow, all while the blues were up on the roof. One of them had his helmet off, and the others were playing keep-away.

Carolina had planned to set the detonator for thirty seconds, to allow for the time it’d take the reds to get out of there (she didn’t want her guys getting covered in lock-down paint, after all). The fusion coil glowed with a sickly yellow shine, and that was her third clue.

The reds made it out before the explosion, at least. She hadn’t ever gotten a good glimpse of the blue sim troopers playing keep-away, but that didn’t stop them from haunting her. They were the first humans she’d killed.

 _The stuff of nightmares_ , her father had said when Carolina, all of six years old, had asked about her mother’s job. He’d believed in being honest with her.


End file.
